Council of Nicea?

Question

So the council of Nicea were the ones who declared that God, and Jesus Christ were one individual.right?
And just who was it that told the people of the council, that They were one Person, and not two separate people?
Seems kind of strange for Jesus to speak to himself on the cross, don't you think??
And did He not tell the twelve apostles that He would ascend to the Father??
So either They are two different people, or Jesus has a split personality!
And they do call it the Godhead, or trinity! Three personages in the Trinity? God the Father, God the Son, and the Holy Ghost!
What do you think?? And why!

Sorry, but for Jim?, the rest of you have not made it clear as to why They are not three! God the Father1, God the son,2, and the holy ghost,3 who, I guess, witnesses the other two? Jesus said He was not God, but tthat He was the Son! I think I'd rather believe Him! Carry on? More?

Answer 1

The counsel of nicea was wrong in it's Trinity explanation, they really did a poor job of lying to the people, they also killed many Christan's for not accepting the lie, it was forced. Jesus never claimed to be God but his son and that is where it stands, plus the holy spirit isn't a person it's God's active force. The whole trinity doctrine is a man made doctrine not a doctrine of the bible.

Answer 2

There were two Councils of Nicaea. The first, in 325, formulated the Nicene Creed, which states the Son is consubstantial with the Father. Consubstantial means "of the same substance." Although Father and Son were still considered seperate entities, being made of the same substance established that Jesus Christ was divine.

At the first Council of Constantinople (381), It was decided that the Holy Spirit was also consubstantial with both the Father and the Son. This was the origin of the Holy Trinity, the Bishops of the Church literally voted to decide that the three entities were all made of the same substance, thus making it a heresy to believe, as did many early believers, that the Holy Spirit was created by the Son.

The idea of the Trinity didn't actually appear in Christian theology until St. Augustine wrote "De Trintate" (400 - 416). Here, Augustine likened the Holy Spirit to the natural love between Father and Son. Augustine was the first to claim that the three entities, Father, Son, and Holy Spirit were one in the same. It is obvious that Augustine was retroactively creating a philosophical basis for pre-existing Church doctrine, exactly as he did when he invented the concept of the Soul (390) to explain how Christ's promise of eternal life might be possible. Likewise, Augustine also retroactively created the concept of Original Sin to justify the paternalistic Church's negative stance regarding the value of women within human civilization.

The second Council of Nicaea was held in 787 and dealt largely with the issue of the sacred images which had been removed from churches because the Iconoclasts considered them craven. The second council of Nicaea validated the veneration of sacred images by establishing that veneration of an image was not the same as idolatry, the worship of the actual object itself.

Personally, I'm an atheist and not a Solipsist. Thus, I have absolutely no faith in any of the political maneuverings of the early Church. It's all just meaningless empty superstition, as far as I'm concerned.

Answer 3

The Council of Nicea did not invent the doctrine of the deity of Christ. Rather, the Council of Nicea affirmed the Apostles' teaching of who Christ is—the One true God in Deity and Trinity with the Father and the Holy Spirit. Of course this is contrary to what opposers of the faith on here would teach. Also, the idea that the council of nicea added verses to the bible is a hoax. That did not happen. I don't know why that fallacy keeps being perpetrated.

Answer 4

That's an excellent question. Thank you for posting.

Now forgive me for forgetting your name, but to the person who said the Trinity was recognized well before the council of Nicea? Please take a moment and look up the origins of the trinity in the New Catholic Encyclopedia. It says that the teaching didn't surface until the 4th Century. I don't recall whether or not it mentions the counsel itself, but they were certainly around the same time.

Answer 5

This is not an unusual question and I think that these discussions help us all to clarify things. The trinity is a word used first by Tertullian in the 2nd century. Bishop of Carthage.
He did not mean three persons as we use the word. He used the latin word persona of course and meant that God showed himself in three different ways. He was thinking like a Greece actor. They played different roles and held in front of their face a mask to show which one they were now.
Jesus is the one who said the Father and I are one. He was put to death for claiming to be Yahweh God of the old testament. You can read this in John 9.
The whole idea of him speaking to himself on the cross is traditionally thought of as a time when he took our sin he became sin for us and therefore as Paul said in Philippians 2, He gave up his Godness. The separation during that experience was the first time and shocked him. This is the one time he was not God in that sense.
The fact that He was Yahweh God of the Old Testament is paramount in this discussion.
He was, He is, and in the OT the statement Our God is One God must mean something.
The creeds of the church do not separate the trinity as is in the minds of some evangelicals today.
It certainly was not early church thought or teaching.

Answer 6

You are not the only person who do not understand the concept of Trinity.

The thing is that Jesus is our mediator, between God and a man because He is both God and man. So humankind redemption was completely dependent upon the human-divine union in Christ. God did not die, human character of God died when Jesus died on the cross. Jesus is the Word that became flesh ( John 1:14 ). Jesus was the perfect example and the teacher. He showed us how to have a personal relationship with God.

What the council of Nicea did, was that they gave the name to Trinity to explain the trinune concept of our Lord and Savior.

Answer 7

You hit the nail right on the head. The council made up they new law by trying to please ALL the people. They needed and wanted to unify them. The trinity is false. They are 3 separate persons, even though their purpose is the same. Not just on the cross, but who was speaking from the heavens at Jesus' baptism? It is such a basic understanding, yet so many believe it incorrectly.

Answer 8

The council of Nicea was the first ecumenical council of the Catholic church. I am not sure why protestants want to base their religion on the Nicean creed. I don't see that the council says anything at all about a trinity or triune god. Below is the reference.

Trinity or triune god is a pagan belief -- the goddess 3 in one - maiden, matron and crone, but I have heard that the church incorporated a lot of pagan beliefs into their system to help sway the pagans to their cause and to convert. For instance, Christmas (the time of celebration of Christ's birth) falls at the time of winter solstice. Christmas trees and holly were definitely pagan traditions. Christ was actually born in April around the time of Passover (at least I have heard this from several sources that in looking from Biblical sources, this is when he was truly born) Easter has a lot of traditions of pagan festivals in it - Easter eggs was a pagan tradition incorporated into christian festivities. Maybe the trinity is one of the things that came to Christianity from the pagans.

Answer 9

The Council of Nicea did not say that God and Jesus were one individual, or that they were one person. In fact, they said the exact opposite. According to the Council of Nicea, the Father and the Son are two persons. And according to the Council of Chalcedon, they are two individuals (beings), as well as two persons. Sabelius was the guy who claimed that they were one person - and his position was quickly declared heretical (long before the Council of Nicea).

Answer 10

No,

The trinity was well recognized well before Nicea.

Tertullian
"I believe that the Spirit proceeds not otherwise than from the Father through the Son" (Against Praxeas 4:1 [A.D. 216]).

Origen
"We believe, however, that there are three persons: the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit; and we believe none to be unbegotten except the Father. We admit, as more pious and true, that all things were produced through the Word, and that the Holy Spirit is the most excellent and the first in order of all that was produced by the Father through Christ" (Commentaries on John 2:6 [A.D. 229]).

Gregory Thaumaturgus
"[There is] one Holy Spirit, having substance from God and who is manifested through the Son; image of the Son, perfect of the perfect; life, the cause of living; holy fountain; sanctity, the dispenser of sanctification; in whom is manifested God the Father who is above all and in all, and God the Son who is through all. Perfect Trinity, in glory and eternity and sovereignty neither divided nor estranged" (Confession of Faith [A.D. 265]).

Maximus
"By nature the Holy Spirit in his being takes substantially his origin from the Father through the Son who is begotten" (Questions to Thalassium 63 [A.D. 254]).

But the Bible reveals that the Spirit does proceed from the Son. The external relationships of the Persons of the Trinity mirror their internal relationships. Just as the Father externally sent the Son into the world in time, the Son proceeds from the Father internally in the Trinity. Just as the Spirit is externally sent into the world by the Son as well as the Father (John 15:26, Acts 2:33), he proceeds from both Father and Son internally in the Trinity. This is why the Spirit is referred to as the Spirit of the Son (Gal. 4:6) and not just the Spirit of the Father (Matt. 10:20).

We believe in one God, the Father, the Almighty,
maker of heaven and earth,
of all that is seen and unseen.
We believe in one Lord Jesus Christ,
the only Son of God, eternally begotten of the Father,
God from God,
Light from Light,
true God from true God, begotten not made,
one in being with the Father [Greek homoousion to Patri] . . .

This was the principal work of the Council of Nicaea: the addition to the Church’s traditional profession of faith of a word not found in Scripture that nevertheless proved indispensable to the correct expression of the faith. This word (homoousion) proved necessary to affirm unmistakably the truth, also contained in Scripture, that the man Jesus of Nazareth was God, raised from the dead to sit at the right hand of the Father. We do not know who first suggested the word homoousion. Athanasius wrote after the fact that it was Hosius of Cordova. Whoever it was, the word authentically expresses the true faith of the Church: Christ is "one in being" with the Father.

Besides composing the Nicene Creed, the Council also decided a number of other important matters concerning the Church. The gathering proved to be a providential means to enable the bishops to exercise collectively their Christ-given role of teaching, sanctifying, and governing the Church. The Council issued no fewer than twenty directives or canons (from the Greek canon, "rule" or "standard") on such issues as the computation of the date of Easter, the manner of receiving back into the Church those who had apostatized during the persecutions, the conditions for ordination to the priesthood and elevation to the episcopate, questions concerning the conduct of the Church’s liturgy and official prayer, even usury, the taking of unjust interest.

Just as the apostles at the primitive Council of Jerusalem (Acts 15) did not doubt their authority to decide for the Church with the assistance of the Holy Spirit, so the bishops at Nicaea took for granted that they too possessed authority to decide for the whole Church.

The council formalized the creed, not out of thin air, but out of a need to address Ayrianism. The creed of the trinity was recognized by most CHristians as central to the faith before the council. History disagrees with your point.